


Home is a Feeling

by FelicityGS



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Slow Build, Soft Kylux, Writer!Hux, all that's mild implied tho, benarmie, coffee shop au in the loosest of senses in that it takes place mostly in a coffee shop, demi!Hux, pagan!Hux, soft winter themes, written by a touch repulsed ace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:33:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: Hux has been going to the same coffee shop since university. He usually sits at the same table and orders the same slice of seasonal cake or pie. He usually greets the long-time staff, knows when the menu will change the way birds know migration patterns, and knows exactly what time to leave before the local band sets up on Fridays. Hux has always had an excellent work ethic; the coffee shop is his office, and he is very punctual about putting his time in.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mimiwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimiwrites/gifts).



> I got @smolhux for Kylux Secret Satan on Twitter. I hope you enjoy this!! 
> 
> I went with soft Benarmie with winter themes, and threw in a Pagan Hux as a nod to pastel witch Hux request.

Hux has been going to the same coffee shop since university. He usually sits at the same table and orders the same slice of seasonal cake or pie. He usually greets the long-time staff, knows when the menu will change the way birds know migration patterns, and knows exactly what time to leave before the local band sets up on Fridays. 

Hux has always had an excellent work ethic; the coffee shop is his office, and he is very punctual about putting his time in. 

One spring in late March, trees green and raw and bursting with pollen that has kept Hux’s eyes a constant red and nose leaking eternally, a new man starts to come to the coffee shop. Hux only glances up because without the lunch rush it is quiet; the chime of the bells over the door gives him an excuse to procrastinate another few moments.  

The man standing in the doorway has shoulders so broad one could build a house upon them; Hux sucks a breath in through his teeth, gripping his pen perhaps a touch too tight. The man is slightly curled in, but as he walks to the counter he straightens and Hux cannot take his eyes off his easy lope, all that leg that stretches forever. Will he even fit in any of the chairs here? Even his clothes seem ready to break at the seams. His hair is pulled up, a few stray strands of dark brown-black escaping and curling at the nape of his neck. 

His lips look sad as he turns, as if feeling Hux’s eyes on him, and Hux quickly looks back to his laptop screen and the words that he has only been typing out of stubborn work ethic. 

Perhaps it is not sadness, but Hux doesn’t dare look back up yet. He might be seen--well, he will be, with his hair, but their eyes might  _ meet _ , and that is a thought that is frankly repellant at this early stage. Everything about this man is disgusting.

“Ben!” Thannison calls at the counter, and Hux’s mind immediately supplies every variant of the name that it can, and he’s halfway to looking up the meaning so he can find  _ other _ non-obvious Ben-like names to use before he stops himself.

This is  _ ridiculous _ . 

He does glance up, once he’s sure he won’t be noticed, and watches as Ben settles into one of the overly large and fading red arm chairs that nearly swallow Hux’s own thin frame up when he attempts to sit in them. Ben-- _ Ben _ \--however, looks entirely at ease, and they are, Hux admits, perhaps the only chairs that might accommodate him comfortably. 

Ben pulls a book from his bag; his head bows. Hux can see the way his hair tugs from his horribly sloppy bun, more wisping across the back of his neck, the glint of a piercing in one ear. It is, unfortunately, all he can see from his current vantage point, and suddenly his favorite seat in the coffee shop is no longer quite so nice. 

Hux gives a sigh, and looks back to the novel he has open and he has brute forced another five hundred words on thus far today. He looks at the notebook with the plot outline next to him, then back to the novel, and decides that, seeing as he has written  _ something _ on the novel, that he is allowed to give himself a small break.

He opens a new document, and writes down every detail, scant as they are, that he can observe about Ben, and how Ben must be frankly one of the worst people in the world, friendlessly reading a book in a coffee shop. 

The next day, Hux picks a  _ new _ seat, and if it happens to be one where he will be able to observe Ben--supposing Ben ever comes back--then that is  _ only _ happy accident. He opens up his novel, writes another three hundred words, deletes half of that, and is chewing furiously on the cap of his pen when the door chimes and in walks Ben, still massive and broad and hair down today and  _ oh _ . 

When Ben sits, once more in one of the old armchairs, he pulls out a book.  _ Fallen _ , and it looks like a teen romance novel; Ben looks--when Hux glances--enraptured, brows drawing down as he focuses. His front teeth, Hux discovers, are slightly crooked as he chews his lip, then his thumbnail, and he hunches forward before slumping back. His lips are so full, and they gleam, and of  _ course _ someone with lips like those  _ would _ read a romance novel for teen girls, and Hux imagines that he probably would be in a movie adaption of one if he did not look to be near Hux’s age. 

Hux writes about this, as well, knowing full well it is  _ not _ his novel and he shall, almost undoubtedly, get a scolding from Phasma later if he cannot in some way justify his lack of progress. 

Thankfully-- _ awfully _ \--Ben does not come in the next day, and Hux manages to make up for the last two days, even if it is not enough to put him back on target for the week.

***

Ben does not come every day of the week, but when he does, Hux writes about him because he cannot find any way to avoid it. Hux has had muses before, of course, but usually he can  _ control _ how they affect his work. 

Ben’s expressions are disgusting and awful and beautiful; it should be frankly impossible for one human’s movements to fascinate him so, especially as Ben’s expressive face certainly does  _ not _ have infinite expressions. Hux can find no way to justify his obsession as the spring shifts to summer and Ben begins to wear shorts and tank tops that show off arms that could  _ lift _ the same house theoretically built upon his shoulders. Hux diligently documents the way Ben’s skin darkens like Crusoe’s the week Ben spends reading  _ Robinson Crusoe _ . When the air grows hot and humid, Ben brings thick horror anthologies and chews his thumbnail like a child, shivering despite the heat, and Hux writes stories about a boy with too big ears and gangly limbs trying to escape a house dense with memories and the same summer weight crushing them now.  

By the end of summer, when the heat is at its zenith and Hux cannot step outside without an inch of fabric and layers of sunscreen on his skin, Hux has fully abandoned his novel in favor of this—an anthology from a dozen viewpoints, all about one man, because it is all he has written in  _ months _ . He edits and adds and attempts to find some way to fit in every facet of the man he has spent so long watching, and still, yet--will never--speak to. 

“This is great,” Phasma tells him, calling him, and that is how he knows he has written something worthwhile, because she only calls when it is either worthwhile or less than shit and never anything in between.

“Good,” Hux says, and watches the way Ben sprawls over the too large armchair, turning it small. He can’t see the spine, but he doesn’t think he would be able to read it if he could; it is old and cracked and falling apart. Ben’s hands are calloused, Hux has passed close enough his table to know this, and it only means that his mind supplies the soft rasp they likely have against the old, frail paper; one hand cradles the book as gently as a small bird, and Ben turns the pages so softly, so  _ delicately _ , that it is as if they have ghosted across the back of Hux’s neck and he has to look down, look away, flushing horribly and heart pounding in his chest. 

“I need to add to it, one last,” Hux says, because it will always be, he thinks, one last story so long as he is able to see Ben. 

Phasma laughs at him and lets him go, and Hux turns to his computer and writes a story that his critics would think him incapable of--but he is still, absolutely, not in love, even as he steals glances at Ben, his hair spread over the chair’s arm as if it were a pillow, legs spread wide, and fingers terribly, wonderfully gentle.

***

It does, in fact, become the last story--Ben does not come back the next day, or the day after, or the week after. Hux feels a pang of worry, but Ben never really made friends with anyone here, and Hux cannot ask. People, as Hux well knows, come and go. 

He takes it as a sign that Ben was truly meant to be a muse--as if he could have ever been anything more--and sets to deciding where to place the last story he wrote, the one that is all heat and want and that he still can still barely look at, feeling raw and overexposed the way he did when he first showed his writing to someone else as a boy. 

It is for the best; editing takes time, and Hux cannot risk mooning over Ben instead of doing the work that will turn this book from an electronic file meticulously backed up on several USBs and cloud services to a real, physical thing that Hux will be able to add to his shelf of published works and people will be able to buy. 

Fall comes and passes, trees crowned red and gold and then beginning to empty; Hux’s breath fogs on his morning jogs, and he can  _ almost _ ignore the voice in the back of his mind ticking off all the days since he has last seen Ben, last written something  _ new _ about him. Today, the last read through before the book is sent to the printers--then nothing. The wind howls icy through his jacket and he breaks into a sprint, ignoring the unnamed  _ sting _ in his chest that surely is just a stitch and not something  _ emotional _ .

He’s written everything down. There’s nothing to lose by sending this book into the world. 

***

Hux gets his complimentary copy not long after the first snow in November. It’s hardback and sleek and even has a dust cover made out of the paper he likes that does not pick up a thousand finger prints like the glossy ones. Editing done, he finds he has little to do at the coffee shop other than peruse the books at the take one-leave one table. He feels empty, but then, he always does after a book is at last out in the wild; it has nothing to do with the fact that it has been nearly three months and he still has not seen Ben. 

There is a part of him--not  _ romantic _ \--that would like to present his muse with the book he inspired; a part that believes,  _ somehow _ , that doing so will magically fill the absence the book has left and make the circle whole.

His publicist, Mitaka, has already planned for a book tour that will begin in two days so that they both will be home before Yule and Christmas. Yule for Hux’s benefit, and Christmas for Mitaka's--rather their fiance Matt’s benefit, whom Hux still has yet to meet.

It’s more than enough time to take one last trip to the coffee shop before he must pack for the month long tour.

The coffee shop is familiar and warm, and the smell of fresh pumpkin pie and ginger tickles his nose as he steps in. His skin prickles as he sets his bag down and unwraps his scarf. He pulls his gloves off and glances, hopefully, at the armchairs. Empty, but Hux has always arrived well before Ben. 

Hux will not admit it aloud, but the snow and cold are his favourite time of year--it has all his favourite flavours, the joys of Yule, the stark contrast between outside and inside, ugly sweaters and piles of blankets. It is a shame, as ever, that he has no one to share these things with, but--he ignores the twinge, the same as the one that haunts his morning jogs and nearly subconscious thoughts about Ben--he has long since grown used to this. He is not an easy man to like.

He agonizes a few pleasant moments over whether he will have the pumpkin or pecan pie. Eventually, he settles for the pecan and compromises with the seasonal pumpkin latte which is, in his opinion, far superior to Starbucks own pumpkin spice latte. 

He gets his laptop and begins to browse online. Reviews of the newest book have been heart-warmingly positive, at least from the places that matter most to him; understandably, there has been some criticism of the format from various quarters, but it is nothing he has not expected. Perhaps this will be the one that catches fire and becomes a runaway success, but Hux has never depended on such; steady and continual output has, in general, been what paid the bills on time. 

The bell rings and a chill breeze gusts in, drawing Hux’s eyes up instinctively. 

_ Ben _ , he thinks, throat squeezing so tight and chest warming so instantly he almost thinks he’s having an anxiety attack before he settles. Then he registers that all is not, perhaps, so well. 

Ben is wrapped warmly in an overlarge black coat, and his cowl—an honest to gods  _ cowl _ , Hux wishes that he had seen this to add to the book that is already published and done--is ratty and torn and yet clearly well loved and mended. His shoulders are even broader with all this around him, and yet he seems…  _ smaller _ , hunched in more. His steps are less sure, and where once his stride suggested move or be move, now it is unsteady and painstaking; Hux might even say  _ painful _ . Ben’s hair hangs in his face to cover much of it. 

When Ben at last gratefully sinks into a chair--at a  _ table _ , chair indeed small for his size--Hux realizes that Ben is shaking, all over, and there is a flash of puckered pink skin at his chin that disappears beneath the mass of hair covering his face. He also realizes that, perhaps, Ben’s absence was not, in fact, coming and going as people do, but forced upon him by life deciding he looked like a good target to kick. 

Unamo is the one who, instead of calling Ben’s name, brings his coffee over to him. Ben looks away, but Hux imagines he is embarrassed--the telltale red of one of Ben’s ears suggesting as much. 

Hux looks away before Ben finally notices him. He looks at the book, which he has diligently brought every day since receiving it, and determines that he cannot, in fact, give it to Ben--Ben, whose hands are presently shaking as he lifts his cup, mouth a harsh and stubborn line. Ben absolutely does not deserve to play the part in the cheap travesty of the appallingly romantic notion that Hux has been entertaining. Perhaps he has bought too far into the man he has created in his head--he has never spoken to Ben. He will never speak to Ben. Giving Ben the book will not allow Hux to recapture or fill the echoing emptiness and pang of not-loneliness in his chest; he has been foolish to think it might somehow close the circle the way finishing the book has not. 

When Hux leaves, he leaves the book in the take one-leave one pile, face red beneath his scarf, refusing to look back for even a farewell glance at Ben. The book tour will be the closure he’s seeking; it always is.

***

The book tour is not the closure he is looking for. He goes through the motions, and tolerates the people whom he owes his livelihood, and makes sure not to cause Mitaka too terribly many problems. Hux knows how to play nice, when it is required.

For the first time, the prospect of spending Yule  _ alone _ is not just mildly upsetting but horrifying. Perhaps he should adopt a cat; he’s always meant to, and the sales of the book are going well enough that he could possibly even afford one. He isn’t even sure what has caused it, other than the general post-book malaise that still isn’t lifting no matter how many excited fans he meets and books he signs. 

“Have a wonderful Yule,” Mitaka tells him at the end of the book tour, cheerful and plane-bound for Matt in New York, and Hux--for the first time--finds he actively hates Mitaka, despite the fact that they are one of the few humans that Hux genuinely enjoys spending time with. 

“Enjoy meeting your future in-laws,” is what Hux settles on, and heads for his own gate and his sleepy college town with its wonderful cafe that he has decided, sometime between Nevada and California, he will not be returning to. Perhaps he might even move to a new city; the timing feels right.

It is not some futile attempt to run away. There’s nothing to run away from. Armitage Hux does not run from  _ anything _ , unless it is tactically the wiser choice. 

***

The day before Yule, he wakes under a pile of blankets and decides that he will, in fact, take one last trip to the coffee shop. He already bought all the small trinkets and souvenirs for the staff, after all, and they will not deliver themselves. 

This, unlike everything else, feels right. He opens his curtains, delighted to find that his favourite sort of snow is falling--soft and gentle, the flakes nearly as large as a fingertip, looking for all the world as if he is inside a snowglobe that has the good grace not to require any tedious shaking. He loads up a paper bag with the souvenirs, wraps himself in his favourite black wool coat, matching gloves, and cashmere scarf, and heads out into the snow. There are decorations out; they’ll be pretty on his way home in the evening, and already he feels a little more at peace with things.

It is important, he tells himself, to properly say goodbye to places. That’s what he’s doing. Or perhaps he won’t--perhaps his malaise has simply made him overly melodramatic. Already, as he steps in and Thannison sees him, he feels as if he is coming home, the coffee shop's familiar warmth and atrocious holiday music wrapping around him like a blanket. 

He even brings a book, for old times sake; his reading list always grows exponentially when he is writing and unable to risk contaminating his own style in the process. He’ll stay and drink coffee and eat and walk home after dark, when the lights are on. 

He doesn’t see Ben, but he also makes sure to keep his eyes focused on Thannison and Unamo. 

“You shouldn’t have, really,” Thannison says, as he always does when Hux returns with souvenirs. 

“Consider it repayment if you must,” Hux says, as he always does, and the words are familiar; he can’t help but smile a bit. 

“Never, you practically keep us afloat on your own. This is on us, what do you want?”

“Whatever hidden holiday treat you’ve kept away from me this year. And, of course—”

“A peppermint mocha,” Thannison finishes. 

Hux turns and looks. Ben is there--in an armchair, back to Hux, just like the first time he sat down in front of Hux. Hux thinks that if he  _ is _ going to keep coming back here, he will have to let go of the person he made up in his head and wrote down--all of him, all the different versions of him. Hux’s old seat, the one that means he won’t be able to see Ben properly, is blessedly open, so Hux slides into it, pulls out his book, and tries to be an adult. He never spoke to Ben; it’s unlikely Ben even knows he exists. 

He gets his coffee and a plate of honest to goodness gingerbread cookies, crisp and hot and perfect; his attention keeps trying to drift to Ben, but slowly, the cookies and coffee and the book prove a convincing enough trio that he forgets why he was even so trepidatious about coming back at all--there is, in fact, nowhere else that Hux has ever felt like he belonged. It isn’t fixing the insistent twinge in his chest, but that is nothing a visit to the doctor can’t take care of.

“This is you,” a voice says lowly, as too large as the laughter that Hux has detailed in the book currently being slid across the table, his own face staring up at him from the dust jacket held open by a hand that he is certainly  _ not _ familiar with--except all the ways he is. “Isn’t it?”

Hux’s face warms and his throat closes and it is suddenly very, very hard to convince himself to keep breathing. He aims for something cooler, but he knows the shadow being cast over his table, even if only from extrapolation of the body he’s spent an awfully long time observing. 

“You’re in my light,” Hux says, looking up, and his voice is blessedly steady even though he is aware that he is almost certainly blushing. 

Ben is even worse up close, but he looks—

\--not quite so sad, as he was in spring when Hux first saw him. There is a scar now that bisects his face, the puckered pink that Hux saw before healed and ragged and white as a bolt of lighting. His hair is neat, tamed as it can be, brushed back. He looks--so  _ warm _ , so alive, and Hux hates and loves everything about this moment, because it is both what he has desperately wanted and also determined he must move past. Because it makes the twinge in his chest worse, nearly knife-like, and also better, because now it doesn’t hurt so much.

“Sorry,” Ben says, and then sits down next to Hux, takes one of his cookies, and tries it. His hands still shake a little, but now there is no pain or embarrassment. Hux stares, flabbergasted that Ben could possibly be so  _ rude _ , but then, before he can say anything, “I wondered why you kept looking at me, before, you know.”

There is no question; Hux is  _ blushing _ , burning up and sweat beginning to slide down the back of his neck, palms suddenly damp. He places a bookmark in his book and sets it down, lays his hands flat on top of it to keep from fisting his coat or pants.

“It’s good, though.” Ben taps the book; his smile is crooked and pulls his scar; the asymmetry that Hux obsessed over for months before is  _ nothing _ compared to the wholly unique disastrous beauty that sits before him now. “I liked it.”

“I am glad to hear that the man who indulges in  _ Twilight _ enjoys my books.” Hux cannot help himself--it’s a defensive reaction. It is why his publicist and editor are some of the only people who tolerate him; he knows this, and he waits for Ben to grow angry but—

Ben laughs. It’s even louder up close, but now Hux can notice all the details he couldn’t sitting half the coffee shop away. Ben’s teeth, all white except for a single silver crown, the way his chin tips back and his adam’s apple dips with it. Hux could write thousands more books with just these few moments in Ben’s presence-- _ wants _ to, as much as he finds a hand twitching with a desire to reach out and touch. 

“If I don’t read the bad, how can I know what’s good?” Ben asks, entirely sincere, leaning forward towards Hux. Hux leans away, but not that far. Not enough to scoot back. Ben takes Hux’s coffee, and tries it. “This is terrible.”

“Then get your own.” 

Ben pouts, teeth digging into his bottom lip so subtly that Hux cannot even see them, only the way they dimple the pinkness. It is horribly, terribly unfair.

“You never even talked to me, but you wrote a whole book about how much you like me. And that whole section with the imagined lover? I mean.” Ben pauses, eyes dewy and doe-like and too brown and rich and deep, drawing Hux in. “I thought the least you could do is buy me a coffee, but I guess…”

“You’re attempting to manipulate me,” Hux says, flabbergasted, and Ben’s pout breaks back into that terrible, charming smuggler’s grin. 

“Is it working?”

“No,” Hux says, then, because Ben--the real one--is already proving far more solid and fascinating than the one he just wrote a book about, he reconsiders. “Perhaps. Thannison!”

***

They talk, too long and too late; Hux only meant to stay until just past dark and instead he’s being pushed out with Ben at closing. Ben grins at him, eyes dark and breath steaming the air as they stand in the snow. Christmas lights wink all down the street along the shop fronts and in the windows of the apartments above them, and they look as warm as the twinge in Hux’s chest that has spent the last hour trying to crawl out of his mouth with words that he won’t be able to take back. 

_ I should go, _ Hux thinks; he could leave now, and never come back, and he would never see Ben again, never have to deal with how now that Ben is speaking to him, he is even more helpless against the man’s charms. 

He could let him go, here. All of this. 

His chest, warm and knife-sharp, turns agonizing and he realizes there is not--was never--any choice, not from the moment he first laid eyes on Ben.

“Do you want to go look at the lights?” Hux asks.

Ben smiles, wide and delighted and almost boyish, and somehow his hand snakes into Hux’s coat pocket to twine with Hux’s own. He leans close, too close, and Hux doesn’t find himself recoiling, just watching as Ben leans in, forehead ever so gentle as it presses against Hux’s own--not terrifying or too close or even the more typical skin-crawling, just…  _ warm _ . 

The pain breaks, and even the cold cannot touch how hot he feels. Somehow, he doesn’t feel as if he needs to push Ben away, to flee this promise of future disappointment.

People do not like Hux, and do not stay, and yet--

“I’d love to,” Ben says. “There’s an ice rink downtown we can walk to from here. Open air.”

Hux swallows and tells himself his shiver is only the chill of the winter air, a snowflake managing to find a way to slip under his scarf to his neck. 

“I think,” he says carefully as he leans into Ben’s weight and warmth and bulk, “that would be lovely.” The words are unfamiliar and frightening and wonderful, and he’s barely finished them before Ben has closed the gap and they are kissing--quick and chaste, and this time it’s Hux who is trembling. 

“Let’s go then,” Ben says, and Hux follows in a daze, wondering how he has been so blessed.

**Author's Note:**

> much thanks to @thewightknight for letting me know where the fuck i'd read the post that had inspired the idea for this fic, here's the original post that heavily inspired this fic


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